They appeared among us following the sandstorms.
A few days after All-Clear, when the blast door to our bunker finally gave us the green light, we carried everything outside that might later prove useful. The life support systems had shut down as soon as we opened the door, so there was no going back. Some of us wanted to build shelters nearby in case we needed the bunker for safety. There was talk of dangerous rain and other remnants of the fallout we had yet to endure. But Mother Lairen insisted that we let go of the past and move forward to create a new life for ourselves. So we made a mass exodus, all one hundred fifty of us, toward the caves up in the mountains less than a kilometer away. Very slow going at first—until that first sandstorm.
The weird thing about it was that there was no storm, really; there was no wind. The dust and ash started moving at first, seemingly of their own volition, swirling across the tops of rocks and along the ground at our feet, increasing in both volume and intensity. We found shelter in crevices, covered our face shields with our arms as the dust devils whirled the sand and gravel upward, expanding outward. We hid between boulders, beneath the tarps and sheets and mattresses we carried. After the storm, we all were covered in a thick layer of ash.
I remember the taste of it in my mouth, the stale grit on my tongue. My face shield had been shut, fastened to the collar of my jumpsuit, but somehow the stuff had penetrated the polymer. The same happened to each of us. And as we shook ourselves off to resume our climb toward the caves above, we immediately became aware of the strength and agility we now possessed. We were able to leap from rock to ledge, swinging from one handhold to the next with ease, as we scaled sheer rock faces with our supplies in tow. It came as instinct, and we marveled at our newfound abilities. We quickly came to enjoy our gifts as we put them to use.
Mother Lairen later said we'd been born again, christened by our Creator with the dust of a new earth. Yet at the time, she seemed unnerved by it. I'd never seen her so disturbed by anything. She grew very quiet and would not eat with us during our mealtimes. She said she was fasting and praying. It wasn't long afterward that we reached the caves, so we had something else to turn our attention to: making a new home for ourselves. For a while we tried to forget about the sandstorm and our miraculous climb.
Then one moonless night, Sheylia—a frail girl—said she saw something in the distance. A few of us joined her, and though we craned our necks and squinted our eyes, looking left and right from atop our perch on the rock ledge, it was in vain.
"Don't you see them?" Sheylia's small voice carried a dreamy quality. I wondered if she was sleepwalking. "Can't you hear them?"
"Who, Sheylia?" I glanced back into the cave behind us to see if anyone else was there. We stood alone with her. "Who do you see?"
She inhaled deeply, and a slight smile played on her lips. "Visitors." She took another deep breath of the night air, her arms floating out from her sides. "They're coming, Daiyna. Our husbands are coming. We get to be mommies!"
One of the others cursed and turned away. "Can't see a damn thing. Go back to bed." The rest straggled after her, murmuring among themselves.
"Don't they want to meet their husbands, Daiyna?" Sheylia asked me.
I didn't know what to say. Many of our sisters were not keen on the idea of becoming breeders in order to repopulate the earth. They'd been able to live without men for years, and they'd gotten used to it.
"Just look around," they'd say. "Would you really want to bring a child into this world?"
Maybe they were right. Mother Lairen chided them gently, as was her way, reminding them it was both our duty and blessing to be mothers of the next generation. It was our destiny, she told them. But they would have nothing of it. As a sign of their resistant solidarity, they shaved their heads to the scalp.
"Don't you want to see your husband, Daiyna? Don't you want to know what he's like?"
"We'll probably get the same one, Sheylia." I cast her a sideways glance, and she smiled broadly.
"Then I hope he is both handsome and strong, and that he is kind to both of us." She turned to me with a slight frown. "You really can't see them?"
I shook my head. There was nothing to see.
If only I'd been right.
"They're just over there…" She pointed and brought my hand up with hers, our fingers intertwined, directed westward. "Maybe ten kilometers away now. They can see us too, I think."
I strained to see, but it was too dark and too far. "Sheylia... Have you always been able to see like this?"
"No." She sighed happily and grinned at me. "Pretty neat, huh?"
My mind flashed back to the sandstorm and our climb. I tried to fight the idea that something had changed us, telling myself that Sheylia was only seeing things, hearing things. But then I heard it too: the low hum of a vehicle, maybe more than one. Faint, but distinct and growing louder, carried to us on the cool breeze blowing up the face of a sheer cliff below.
"Is it—?" I listened again. "What you hear, is it the sound of an engine?"
She brightened and clapped her hands. "Yes! Isn't it wonderful, Daiyna? We have to tell the others!" She turned away, overjoyed.
"Sheylia—"
They shot her.
She seemed to float for a moment, hanging in mid-air as a patch of blood blossomed across her gown. Then came
